AuthorTopic: Bizarre or goofy consoles from the old days? (Read 37325 times)

A big NY/NJ/CT band - Rat Race Choir - had a "quad" club sound system in the 70's-80's controlled by bolted-together Shure M67's. It was amazing for its day, but in retrospect it probably had a frightening FR, noise floor, etc...

I remember "short loaded" consoles: 26 inputs in a 32 frame, etc. The really poor/optimistic soundguys wouldn't even spring for the factory strip "blanks" to close up the console. Usually the rest of the rig was similarly & "creatively" compromised.

I remember seeing alot of Old neptune consoles ( I have a gl2200 in a old neptune case), as well as a few troupers, Some old Studiomasters, lots of old tapcos, a few biamps ( not as many as you think for the NW) and a weird rack mount Malachi. Later it was a suprisingly large amount of peavey Mark 4's and a few yamaha's with the ocational sound craft or Hill console.

I, and probably many others, would love to see some pictures of these home grown beauties, if you guys have any. I'm just old enough to have seen a few, but anyone younger than, say forty, might have a bit of time wrapping their mind around some of these creations. Thanks!

I was designing production recording consoles by the late '70s but the first company I worked with (LOFT) went belly up before delivering many finished units. They had orders but couldn't manage the business side of running a company adequately (I was just the circuit design guy).

JR - Where was LOFT located? We had one of their boxes at Malaco in the late 70's. I think it was called a "Delay Line / Flanger" or somthing like it. I remember liking it quite a bit. It did some things none of our other boxes would do, and sounded better than the Eventide Flanger that was so popular at the time. IIRC, John Fry at Ardent had suggested we look into getting it.

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JR - Where was LOFT located? We had one of their boxes at Malaco in the late 70's. I think it was called a "Delay Line / Flanger" or somthing like it. I remember liking it quite a bit. It did some things none of our other boxes would do, and sounded better than the Eventide Flanger that was so popular at the time. IIRC, John Fry at Ardent had suggested we look into getting it.

Certainly not bizarre or goofy but with the sad death of Neil Muncy I will mention using one of his creations, the SS ( Suburban Sound ) 3 mixer. A band I knew named Grits back in the day had built their own 1" eight track studio ( I'm talking early to mid 70s back in the day here ) and the mixer was an SS3 supplemented by a pair of API compressors and EQ modules. They brought the mixer out for their live gigs as well. My own system was still at the Tapco mixer level so being able to get the use of the SS3 occasionally was a real treat. Melcor potted op amps, sealed Allen Bradley pots, that thing was built like a tank.

It also gave me a life long appreciation for the idea that audio equipment does NOT have to have dead black control surfaces to be worthwhile.